The Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty’s management Secretariat has held a one-day LEAP re-assessment programme with the LEAP community focal persons at the Ga West Municipal Assembly.

The LEAP re-assessment programme seeks to identify and determine the poverty status and continuous eligibility of the beneficiaries on the LEAP payroll through a robust targeting mechanism across all LEAP communities in Ghana. The Ga West Municipal Assembly have 41 communities on the LEAP payroll.

The Re-Assessment is to reduce the incidence of inclusion and exclusion errors and to improve the efficiencies of allocating budget to the most vulnerable households by way of covering all extremely poor populations in Ghana.

The LEAP households were supposed to be re-assessed every four years since its implementation in 2008 which hasn’t been done due to several considerations including funding.

The exercise will help LEAP update the register of its beneficiaries to ensure that the cash grants go to eligible households and respond to changes in poverty levels. The reassessment will also identify households that will no longer be eligible for LEAP and link them to other complementary services and support.

The Re-Assessment programme will enhance transparency, consistency and fairness principles providing an even playing field for all extremely poor households to enrol into the programme.

The exercise will be piloted in 10 districts in 5 regions for staters and mode of payment will be done through the Ghana Pay mobile money platform henceforth.

Present at the community engagement were the Head of Ga West Department of Social Welfare Madam Evelyn Nanbigne, the Head of Development Planning, Madam Cynthia Okoe-Martey, the Head of Information, Madam Rachel Sarpong, the Head of the Department of Statistics, Madam Rosemond S. Kensema, Officers from the Department of Social Welfare and LEAP focal persons of 38 communities.

In conclusion the Re-Assessment of the LEAP Programme will be imperative and technical. Funding will be successful and there will effective communication at all levels and the process will not affect any payments in any way.

Source: Dorcas Asantewaa Osei

Information Services Department, GWMA